THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Monday, January 28, 2008

Paying someone for their title, not their content

Last year, Bob Dupuy said this in regards to testing of baseballs:

“We are satisfied that the ball comports with all major league specifications,” DuPuy said. “Beginning in 2000, we have had annual independent testing done by UMass at Lowell, baseball research center, under the direction of Dr. James Sherwood, and those tests have showed full compliance with standards.”

That very same Dr. James Sherwood said this:

That’s part of what frustrates Sherwood… “Their testing window is this big,” he says, his hands a foot apart. “I don’t know why it was ever set that wide.” A ball testing at the high end could travel as much as 50 feet farther than one falling on the low end, he says. That’s the difference between a lot of home runs and a whole lot of home runs.  Sherwood would love to bring the testing procedures into the modern era. Upstairs, his computerized machines can control a baseball bat with the precision of Barry Bonds. He has air cannons that can fire a ball at 180 mph. But the league doesn’t like change. Sherwood estimates the MLB hasn’t altered ball design since Babe Ruth played.  Sherwood says there’s some evidence that firing a baseball at 58 mph may not be fast enough to accurately determine its liveliness. “Has there actually been data on that?” Drane asks.  “Yeah,” Sherwood says, “We’re just going to explore looking at the higher speeds and present that to the league. Maybe they’ll change their minds.”

So, if you re-read DuPuy’s comments, they make perfect legalese sense. He used terms like “specifications” and “standards” without telling us what they actually were, and instead name dropped the scientist’s name as the catchall stamp to his statement.  And the reporter didn’t bother checking in with the scientist. Bob DuPuy, being quoted in terms of telling us something, in fact ended up telling us nothing at all.